[audio:http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/TheGreen_06062014_4-ArtsPlaylist_EcarteDance.mp3|titles= Delaware Public Media's Cathy Carter interviews ecarte dance theatre’s Artistic Director, Judith Engelgau.]
Music by artists ranging from Stevie Nicks to Bruno Mars will provide the audio backdrop for the performers of Dover’s ecarte dance theatre next week when the Kent County troupe presents their annual spring show at Delaware State University.
The modern dance and contemporary ballet company, established in 1981, will present ten produced works choreographed by seasoned troupe members as well as preteens enrolled in ecarte’s young choreographers program.
Ecarte dance theatre’s Artistic Director, Judith Engelgau, says there are two things necessary for an aspiring dancer to consider if they wish to become an accomplished performer.
“The first thing is discipline,” she asserts.
“It is extremely important that anyone who is serious about dance understands how disciplined the art form is and how much you have to discipline yourself in order to be a dancer. The other thing is, embodying the freedom which makes you an artist. Those are two essential things. You have to look at how someone commits themselves to the discipline and then you have to encourage them to take that discipline into realms of the unknown. The discipline is very safe once you get into it,” she adds. The unknown is a scary place but in order to be an artist; you have to dive into the unknown.”
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Engelgau concedes the juxtaposition poses an intricate balance.
“It’s very difficult,” she says.
“It’s perhaps a lot easier and safer to acquire the discipline than it is to obtain the other part. But the other part, the artistry, is really very limited if you don’t have the technique and the discipline to carry you as far as you can go. The real artists are those that are very impeccably trained and disciplined and yet are able to take that into unknown places and explore things that make people just catch their breath.”
Engelgau was trained in ballet as a youngster but discovered modern dance as a teenager. She notes there are a few significant differences between the two dance styles.
“Modern dance was a reaction against more rigid forms of dance,” she says. “It was more grounded, earthier, and a little more immediate and more passionate perhaps than ballet.”
But, she adds, ballet is the form of dance that best trains the body.
“It creates and tunes the instrument in a way that no other form of dance can do quite as fully,” she notes. “I do a ballet class every day because even jazz, hip-hop or whatever; you need to have a body that’s ready to work and a body that is trained. Ballet is best at that and I feel that it’s also the foundation of all other kinds of dance. They all come out of the ballet vocabulary.”
In regards to performing, Engelgau says that ecarte dance theatre hasn’t done their job if they don’t move spectators in some meaningful way.
“As a choreographer, as a performing artist, we are always trying to affect our audiences,” she says. “We’re always trying to give them something that they didn't have before. We’re trying to give them something to think about or to help them feel something perhaps that they didn't even know was in there.”
Engelgau also hopes the audience is a full partner in the performance.
“If it’s an art form as a performing art, it’s an interaction,’ she maintains. “It’s not just presenting something and having someone clap and say, aren’t you wonderful.”
And as the dance company’s artistic director, she reinforces sentiment.
“It is part of my philosophy that ecarte does not take bows,” she explains.
“I don’t want to remove what the audience has just seen and felt into a realm of, let’s clap because they were good. The dancers are there to give something and the audience is there to give back apart of themselves. It’s what the art is about. It’s not about let’s sit here primly and watch you do something that you've rehearsed and we’ll clap if we thought it was worth clapping for. Hopefully it was something that was an interaction, something that happened in the moment, and we would prefer to just let the moment settle.”
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Engelgau credits two major influencers for helping develop her ethos.
“My original idol as a young dancer was Martha Graham,” she notes.
“She was always my idol and I spent a lot of time in New York at her school. People use to say that Martha Graham, even when she was much older, could walk across the stage and leave the audience devastated. Other people were doing all of this wild and crazy stuff but it did not touch you at all. Martha Graham always did.”
Another major motivator was Alvin Ailey and its current director, Judith Jamison.
“I spent a bit of time working with her,” says Engelgau.
“She actually came here to Delaware and did some workshops. One of the most beautiful pieces I ever saw and one that made me want to get into dance was Alvin Ailey’s “Revelations,”she adds. “That program blended a modern dance technique with a real spirituality. It really spoke to me and I try to take that spirit into my own work.”
Engelgau also took note of Alvin Ailey’s multicultural influences.
“Ailey’s work, more so than perhaps any other modern dancer, drew on a lot of different cultures,” she adds. “I’ve tried to do that in my career as well. Those are my roots. Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey were both really influential in forming and directing my path as a dancer and choreographer.”
ecarte dance theatre’s spring show will be staged at 7 p.m next Saturday June 14th at the Education/Humanities Theatre on the campus of Delaware State University in Dover.
Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for students and senior citizens and may be purchased at the box office the evening of the performance. DSU students and faculty with proper ID may attend for free.
(Photo at top of story features left to right: Tricia Massey, Lisa Scott, Kim Cox. Photo courtesy: ecarte dance theatre)
This piece is made possible, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.